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Kent stood still while Marette hted the lamp He had not spoken a word after the kiss He had not taken advantage of it The gentle pressure of her hands had restrained hi her in his arlorious thrill that was like a vibrant music to which every atom of life in his body responded If he claimed his reward at all, he had expected her kiss to be perhaps indifferent, at least neutral But the lips she had given hi, breathing lips They had not been snatched away froered

Then, in the la into Marette Radisson's face He knew that his oas aflaer to find what lay in her own eyes And he was astonished, and then startled The kiss had not disturbed Marette It was as if it had never happened

She was not embarrassed, and there was no hint of color in her face It was her deathly whiteness that startled him, a pallor elow in her eyes It was not a glow brought there by the kiss It was fear, fading slowly out of theone, and her lips trery," she said "How easily some men lose their tempers, don't they--Jeems?"

The little break in her voice, her brave effort to control herself, and the whimsical bit of sentle pressure of her hands had kept hi a fewto hide he saw plainly She had been in danger, a danger greater than that which she had quietly and fearlessly faced at barracks And she was still afraid of thatwhich she wanted hih him It was the force which coainst odds It rose in a ed to hiht Marette saw the change that came into his face For a moment after she had spoken there was silence between them Outside the storm beat in a fiercer blast A roll of thunder crashed over the bungalow The s rattled in a sweep of wind and rain Kent, looking at her, his rinal had come